"Do you know where the National Museum of Health and Medicine is located?"

Sure I do. It's on an Army base, in an industrial park, in a suburban neighborhood...

The National Museum of Health and Medicine However, you'd have a hard time answering the following question, "Excuse me, do you know where the National Museum of Health and Medicine is located? www.americanguesthouse.com/.../the-national-museum-of-hea...

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New medical museum opens in Kansas

New medical museum opens Shawnee Dispatch The museum tells that story through exhibits focusing on different countries, Native Americans, diseases, medicines, medical specialties and other areas of ...

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Mutter museum article

Travel: It's what??? Philadelphia's Mutter Museum is 'disturbingly ... Waterloo Record The nation's finest and oldest medical museum — it's celebrating its 150th anniversary March 4 — bills itself as "disturbingly informative" and that is ... Waterloo Record

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Bits on medical museums on 2 continents

This is from a first-time visitor to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, who reflects on medical care during the Civil War and today:

 

C'est la guerre: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

by Donna McNeely Burke

February 21, 2013 · http://theboothintheback.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/cest-la-guerre-plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme-chose/

 

In this article, a writer's favorite museum to revisit is the Welcome:

 

Literary City: Deborah Levy's London

Booker Prize–shortlisted author Deborah Levy takes us on a tour of her literary London. From her cozy garden shed to the medical museum she revisits to why you can wear a bikini on the bus and no one cares, she explores her city with Henry Krempels.

Feb 22, 2013

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/22/literary-city-deborah-levy-s-new-york.html

 

Why 'Lincoln' should win an Oscar for Best Picture...

...because there's a brief scene of General Daniel Sickles' leg on display at the Medical Museum. Sickles lost his leg at the battle of Gettysburg. The movie is inaccurate as it shows the leg still fully fleshed - which would have stunk amazingly as the flesh decayed off the bone. Instead Museum prepator Schafhirt would have cut and boiled the flesh off, and then wired the bones together so they looked like this picture.

Another scene of a pit of amputated limbs seems to have been influenced by RB Bontecou's photograph "Field Day." And here's the original label for Surgical Photograph 43, Sickle's "Right Tibia and Fibula comminuted by a Cannon Ball."

Upcoming lecture on Medical Museum in NY

The Living Specimen and 'The Museum of Horrors': Amputation, American Civil War Medicine, & the U.S. Army Medical Museummore

by Naomi Slipp

 

What is a sense of place in relation to corporeal subjectivity? If an amputee leaves limb in one place and occupies body in another, how do we define place as rooted by personal location? Likewise if a nation is divided in two by war, what does it mean for a medical museum to display fragments of the bodies of honorable combatants and amputees? How does a museum shape our sense of self, our ideas about nationhood and place, and aid in collective mourning? I argue that the U.S. Army Medical Museum, founded in 1862 during the American Civil War, represented parts of the human body through practices of institutional display and within the pages of sponsored medical publications as both aesthetic objects and medically educational tools. Through an engagement with representations of corporeal fracture in the writings of S. Weir Mitchell and in period photography, lithography, and the field sketches of Winslow Homer, this paper argues that corporeal fracture - made evident within the walls of the U.S. Army Medical Museum and its publications - complicates fixed notions about placement and displacement during and after the American Civil War making living specimens out of some and offering a location for mourning for a nation. 

 

Location: Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

Event Date: Apr 26, 2013

Organization: Crossing the Boundaries: Dis/Place, the 21st Annual Art History Graduate Student Union Conference

American Registry of Pathology retains museum staff contract

The American Registry of Pathology has a long, convoluted history, but was regularized in 1976 with a Congressional charter to support the now-defunct Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. During the time I worked in the Museum, they supplied contract labor for about 2/3 of the staff of the Museum. With the awarding of an almost $6 million dollar contract last week, that role will apparently continue.

Index to "Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens" online now

 A PDF scan of the finding aid for the Civil War pictures taken at and published by the Army Medical Museum - Index to "Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens" and Surgical Photographs, 3rd edition (1994) has been put online at https://archive.org/details/IndexToPhotographsOfSurgicalCasesAndSpecimensAndSurgicalPhotographs

African-American Civil War Surgeons in the NLM Collections lecture

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held Tuesday, 12 February 2013 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., in the Lister Hill Auditorium, National Library of Medicine, Building 38A, Bethesda, MD.  In recognition of African-American History Month, we present:

 

"Oak Leaves on his Shoulders: Discovering African-American Civil War Surgeons in the NLM Collections."

 

Jill L. Newmark

Exhibition Registrar/Traveling Exhibition Service,

History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine

 

During the American Civil War, African American men and women served as medical personnel in hospitals and on the battlefield.  Histories of Civil War Medicine often overlook their participation and contributions, since few personal accounts of black surgeons and nurses exist and materials are often hidden amongst the thousands of Civil War records throughout the country including the National Library of Medicine.  This presentation explores one hospital in Washington, D.C. and follows the journey of discovery that uncovered several African American Civil War surgeons.  The presentation will highlight newly discovered materials from the History of Medicine Division and how they illuminate the story of these surgeons. 

 

All are welcome.

 

Sign language interpretation is provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Stephen Greenberg at 301-435-4995, e-mail greenbes@mail.nih.gov, or the Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339).

 

Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NLM Visitors and Security website:

 

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/visitor.html

 

Sponsored by

NLM's History of Medicine Division

Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, Chief

 

Event contact:

Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD

Coordinator of Public Services

History of Medicine Division

National Library of Medicine, NIH

301-435-4995

greenbes@mail.nih.gov

 

 

 

Newspaper profile of the Mutter Museum

See Albert Einstein's brain and other matters of medical history ... Allentown Morning Call The nation's finest and oldest medical museum — celebrating its 150th anniversary March 4 — bills itself as "disturbingly informative" and that is ...